Meredith, George

(1828-1909)

   Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, he was educated at nearby Southsea and at the Moravian School at Neuwied, in present-day Germany. Although articled to a solicitor, he chose to support himself by journalism and met Charles Dickens, who included twenty-four of Meredith's earliest poems in Household Words. By his death Meredith had written 18 novels-the most famous of which are The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) and The Egoist (1879)and ten collections of poetry. From 1860 to 1894 he was reader for the publisher Chapman and Hall. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905. In 1867 he moved to Mickleham in Surrey, where he died, and his ashes were buried beside his wife in Dorking cemetery, Surrey. Some of his other poetry publications: Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, 1883. A Reading of Earth, 1888. Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History, 1898. A Reading of Life, with Other Poems, 1901. Last Poems, 1909. Some of his poems: "A Faith on Trial," "Modern Love," "The Young Princess," "Woodland Peace," "Young Reynard," "Youth in Memory."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. How Does a Poem Mean? 2nd edition. John Ciardi and Miller Williams, eds. Houghton Mifflin, 1975. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Christopher Ricks, ed. Oxford University Press, 2002. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of George Meredith. Vol. 1. Phyllis B. Bartlett, ed. Yale University Press, 1978. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).